


O Dark O'Clock

by coruscantguard (nadiavandyne), nadiavandyne



Series: 2020 Fic Challenges [16]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bad Things Happen Bingo, Clone Trooper Culture (Star Wars), Clone Trooper-Typical Eugenics Beliefs, Dissociation, Episode: s05e20 The Wrong Jedi, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Internalized Victim Blaming, Past Child Abuse, Psych 101, Rape Aftermath, Recovery is Not a Linear Process, Scarpia Ultimatum, What's A Whumpee Gotta Do To Get Some Sleep Around Here?, Whumptober 2020, for the greater good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:55:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26947051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nadiavandyne/pseuds/coruscantguard, https://archiveofourown.org/users/nadiavandyne/pseuds/nadiavandyne
Summary: How much does the life of a Jedi cost, the masochistic part of Rex wants to ask.Did I sacrifice enough to grant her mercy?
Relationships: CC-1010 | Fox & CT-7567 | Rex, Implied CT-7567 | Rex/Wilhuff Tarkin
Series: 2020 Fic Challenges [16]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1810486
Comments: 11
Kudos: 88
Collections: Bad Things Happen Bingo, Whumptober 2020





	O Dark O'Clock

**Author's Note:**

> Alright, so here's the skinny. This fic kicked my ass. This fic committed first degree murder, and the victim was the author. This fic and I are no longer friends. So y'all are getting this fic at O dark stupid because I refuse to keep this shabuir in my drafts any longer. And no, the title actually has nothing to do with that-- I picked it before writing the fic, lol.
> 
> Additional warnings are in the end notes! This fic is... pretty intense, I must admit. Reader discretion is highly advised.

The thing is, he should have been fine. Captain Rex is a clone trooper. He’s specifically coded to handle stressors, to move on, to do what he must do for the Republic.

And this, dubious as it might have been, was undoubtedly for the Republic. For Ahsoka, really, but Adjutant-General Tarkin is representing the Galactic Republic in her trial, so it was truly done for the Republic.

Rex had slipped out of the Adjutant-General’s office late enough that it was dark outside, or at least as dark as it ever got on Coruscant. Late enough-- or maybe it was early enough, he knew these kind of specifics mattered, but he really couldn’t summon the energy to give a osik about them-- that when he’d slunk into the Guards’ communal showers, they’d been completely empty. A small mercy, one that he didn’t deserve but had no problem taking advantage of. 

So he’d showered. Redressed in his blacks. Went to the sinks. Looked in the mirror, seen that nothing was awry. Besides the bruise on the side of his neck, but his helmet would hide what his blacks didn’t. Started to put back on his armor, felt the reassuring click, click, click, _clunk_ resonate through his bones.

Remembered the click, click, click, _clunk_ of the last time his armor came off, and frozen in what couldn’t have been terror, but felt just like it.

Stood there for too long, before sinking down silently to the floor.

When they were on Kamino, it was a competition, to see who could armor up the quickest, who could shave a precious second off their overall time. Seconds, afterall, matter in a warzone, and for all that they were kids, they were soldiers through and through. Weapons primed and ready for the Republic’s usage, armor gleaming in the artificial light. Their armor was a source of pride. It _still_ was a source of pride. 

But now he’s flinching when he tries to put on his bracers. Force, _he_ hadn’t even touched his bracers, Rex is just flinching for… the sake of flinching, he supposes.

Kriff.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

Rex wrenches himself around, hands automatically going for his guns, but his guns are on the ground, just out of reach, and that’s a forcedamned _rookie_ mistake, what the _kark_ , Captain, get it _together,_ CC-7567, and--

It’s Commander Thire. It’s just Commander Thire. 

“Commander,” he says, tongue feeling heavy in his mouth as he forms the word. It feels like he has to drag it out of himself, pull each letter out of his teeth and _make_ them work together. 

He shouldn’t be here. Shouldn’t be in the Guards’ base. After the events of the last few days, he’s just asking to get punched.

“Captain,” Thire greets, tone sharp, and… and…

There’s a slight Coruscanti accent there, one rounding the edges of his vowels. Huh. He’d never noticed that before. It almost sounds like--

Kark. Kark. Not karking thinking about that. Not now. Not ever. Clones are designed to withstand any stress. This is simply another kind of stress. 

His brain feels sluggish, like it’s waterlogged, malfunctioning. It shouldn’t. He received no head injury. He received no injuries at all, actually, so his body shouldn’t ache the way it does.

"Sorry, 'm going," he says, acutely aware of Thire’s rising annoyance. Or maybe it’s just his own rising annoyance with himself that’s making the room feel tense. “Didn’t mean to…”

He trails off, not sure where the sentence was going, tries not to shake. Thire looks down at him, and he looks up, tries to bring his focus back to the current situation, but… but…

No.

He curls his hand into a fist. Uncurls it. Curls it again. _Get up. Exit the barracks. Return to the Resolute._

The mind controls the body, the Walon Vau of his mind says, voice cold as kyber. You, cadet, control your own mind. There are no excuses for failure. Get _up_.

Vau hadn’t even been speaking to him at the time. He’d just been in the hallway when one of Vau’s cadets went down hard, frozen in place just in the right spot to hear the reprimand. 

_The mind controls the body. Get **up**._

“What in Sith hells are you doing here?”

Rex startles, wrenching his head up. Huh. He hadn’t realized that it had fallen.

Fox.

What the kark.

He feels himself tense up reflexively, and considering the fact that the last time he’s seen Fox, it had turned to blows-- and that was _this morning_ , that was _this kriffing morning_ , dear Force-- he feels like the fact that he tenses up is an understandable reaction. Fox just looks down at him, though, frowning. There’s none of that righteous rage that had been on his face earlier, when Commander Tano had been transferred to RCMO from the Temple, and while his jaw is set like he’s expecting a fight, while his eyes are cold, Fox still looks more confused than anything else.

And-- Thire is gone, he realizes that now. It’s just him and Fox in the too-bright refresher, and he doesn't know when that happened, doesn’t know when Thire left. Doesn't know when Thire left, or when Fox showed up, doesn't know how long its been or if anyone else has been here, and that's. That's terrifying. 

That's the kind of karkup that gets clones called in for reconditioning, the kind of karkup he doesn't have a valid argument against. Cones are engineered not to forget things, bred to be resistant to battle fatigue, and if he's malfunctioning…

Click click click _clunk_.

Fox’s gauntlet drops to the ground, and Fox drops with it, crouching right inside the doorway. The door slides shut behind him.

Rex knows that he must make an interesting picture to the Commander, half armored up and ready to lash out, sitting in enemy territory that _shouldn’t_ be enemy territory, but _is_. It _is,_ because Ahsoka broke out of prison, because Fox found her by the bodies of two of his men, because Ahsoka is the 501st’s. It _is_ because Rex trusts his vod’ika, knows her better than that, knows--

_That she wouldn't do that? Rex, you thought that you knew she would never work with Ventress. You thought you knew her well enough to say that she’d never work with a brother-killer._

Working with is different than being one, though. And- and- really, who is he to judge? He’d worked with Krell, up until the end.

Kark.

Rex doesn’t particularly want to make an interesting picture, though, so he starts to push himself up off the ground, winces when his strained muscles protest. 

"Stay down," Fox orders, reaching forward, and Rex flinches away, but there's no hit, just the back of a cool hand touching Rex's forehead.

"I'm not karking sick," he snarls, ducking out of Fox’s reach

"Then what are you doing on the ground?

"Nothing. I'm fine.”

The look Fox sends him in response to that is one he’s seen on Cody’s face too many times, and something low and deep in his chest aches at that, presses down tight on his ribs and echoes around his brain like a mourning cry.

He failed Cody on Zygerria. He failed Cody before that, on Umbara. He managed to get his brother’s second-in-command _killed_. And-- and for all that his actions here were for the greater good, for all that he’d go back and do it again, it still feels like a failure to him. Something that he can’t allow to come to light.

He doesn’t want to know how Cody would react to hearing what he’d done. 

“Go,” he waves his hand, trying to pull up the right word. “Sleep. It’s like, past midnight. You should be asleep. I’ll… leave. Myself.”

He has no idea, actually, what time it is. Hopefully he’s right with his past midnight guess. His internal clock usually is pretty accurate, but…

Everythings karked up right now. Ahsoka’s on trial for _murder_.

“Great try. I haven’t been able to sleep in years,” Fox says dryly, raising a judgemental eyebrow. Rex half-heartedly glares back, but... he does look tired. He opens his mouth to say something, and--

 _How much does the life of a Jedi cost,_ the masochistic part of Rex wants to ask, just to see Fox’s reaction. _Did I sacrifice enough to grant her mercy?_

"What kind of soldier can't fall asleep?" he asks instead, ignoring the utter hypocrisy of the question. Fox snorts.

"One that's not deployed, osikovid. Budge over, I'm tired of crouching." Fox flops down on the floor, his back hitting the wall opposite to Rex. Up close, he looks less tired and more exhausted, the white lights empathizing the starkness of the dark circles under his eyes.

Rex looks away, looks down. Clenches his fist again. Lets go. 

He knows that Fox is studying him. Knows Fox well enough to know that he knows that Rex knows. Knows Fox well enough to know that he’s expecting Rex to give him a short, no-nonsense explanation anytime now.

He can’t think of an explanation, though. Can’t think of a lie, an excuse, anything. There’s a strange foggy feeling in his mind. He can’t make it go away.

“What happened?” Fox finally demands, and Rex barely manages to catch himself from curling inwards.

“Nothing,” he says. Tries to pull together some snappy retort. Fails. Shrugs instead.

Right as he looks up, he catches the flicker of Fox’s holoscreen shutting down, the completely unrepentant look on Fox’s face. Probably checking his schedule, or… something. Who knows. It’s Fox. 

The bruise. _Osik_. _Osik_. Oh karking Force, oh _osik_.

Fox is too damn good to miss something like that.

He opens his mouth to make an excuse, or-- something. Something. Say something. Don’t let him come to his own conclusion.

Say _something_.

But there’s nothing to say, and Fox’s eyes are calculating, cold. Sure enough, he can tell when Fox puts it all together, the moment of his realization awakening, like the cries of a startled bird, or the flopping of a fish on land.

Fox’s eyes widen, his fists clench, and then--

_Karking say something!_

Like the fights been stolen from him, Fox slumps, visibly swallows hard, eyes flickering shut for just that moment. It’s an odd look on him. Fox doesn’t wear whatever the hell that emotion is very well. It hangs off him wrong, like an over-stretched pair of blacks.

Kark, Rex. You really should’ve said something. 

All too soon, Fox straightens up again, speaks. “You and General Skywalker had a meeting at RCMO scheduled for yesterday afternoon,” he says, and his voice is steady, his tone measured, dispassionate. Like he’s reading off a case briefing. Like he couldn’t care less.

And--

“General Skywalker didn’t make it,” Rex says hurriedly, because he knows his General hasn't exactly made a good impression on Fox, and Rex can't stand to hear him be accused of… this. “He wasn’t-- a part of it. Wasn’t involved at all. Busy trying to find evidence.”

Fox’s face is deceptively blank, saying nothing, saying everything. Rex sighs, and resigns himself to having to tell General Skywalker that no, it was not a Separatist who hacked your commline, just an overprotective big brother, no, he doesn’t give a osik about the holopics you sent to Senator Amidala, I promise he literally could not care less about your somewhat secret marriage.

“He made me an offer,” he admits, and the words taste ashen in his mouth. "For the Commander’s life."

“Who.” 

It’s not a question. Rex shuts his eyes, tries to separate himself from his physical form. Tries to abandon the body that the Republic owns. That the Republic has come to collect it’s payment on. 

Fails. Opens his eyes. 

“Who do you think?” he asks, and it’s bitter on his tongue. Bitter, like the citrus on Zygerria, given only because slaves with scurvy weren’t as efficient as slaves without. Bitter, like the taste of the stims he’d choked down on Umbara before issuing the orders that sentenced his brothers to die. 

If Fox knows that General Skywalker and him had a meeting, then he almost undoubtedly knows _who_ exactly they were meeting. Who Rex ended up meeting alone.

Fox's eyes are large, dark, and he's studying him, calculating. Not like he's a product, not like the way he’s seen natborns watch him, but more as if Fox is the judge, jury, and executioner, and he's been called to hand out justice. 

Fox would not have granted Ahsoka mercy if General Skywalker had not ordered him to. 

"I couldn't let him do it," Rex says suddenly, because he doesn't _want_ to hear Fox put it all together, _can’t_ hear him say that name, _knows_ that hearing that name will shine a spotlight on everything he's avoiding. Make it into something he can’t avoid anymore.

He's dimly aware that at some point, he started shaking. Thankfully, Fox makes no move to touch him. He doesn’t want to know what he would do if Fox tried. "If-if there was anything I could do about it, I had to."

There's silence at that statement, loaded silence, like the twin DC-17s Rex keeps at his waist. Like the twin DC-17s belonging to Fox, the ones that could have ended Ahsoka's life.

And in that silence he can practically hear his own ragged gasps, the buzzing of the artificial light overhead. In that silence, he can practically feel phantom hands on him. 

"Adjutant-General Tarkin doesn't keep his word, vod," Fox finally says, and there's regret in his voice, sharp, heavy regret. Rex flinches at the name, then bristles at the words. 

"Saying no would've signed her death certificate," he snaps back. "She's a kid, Fox. She's a kid, and this trial is—"

"Utter bull, yes, I know," Fox interrupts, voice steady, despite the fact that Rex can see the tension in his shoulders, clear as day. "A murder trial happening in days is unheard of. This kind of thing usually takes months, if not years. It's not fair. But what I'm worried about right now is you."

Fox doesn't look him in the face as he speaks. That's probably a good thing. It's surprising enough that he's doing whatever the hell this is after the argument they had earlier— Rex almost wants to ask how the cheekbone is healing. Fox has butterfly bandages on it, which means that either he didn’t hit him half as hard as he thought he did, or Fox was a di’kut and didn’t go to medical.

The silence stretches, and Rex clenches his fist. Unclenches it. Curls each finger in, one by one, reassembles himself piece by piece. Left gauntlet, click click click _clunk_. Right gauntlet, click click click _clunk_.

The mind controls the body, cadet. 

“Why haven’t you thrown me out yet,” he finally says, voice detached from himself. It should be a question. It isn’t. “What is this.”

“Force hells, Rex,” Fox replies, knocking his head back against the wall. “If I showed up at your barracks, obviously traumatized, having been karking raped by a superior officer--”

“It wasn’t that.”

“-- would you have thrown me out?”

 _Yes_ , something dark and deep and cruel within him whispers, insidious in it’s push. _After what you said about the General? What you said about the Commander? I would’ve thrown you out without a moment of hesitation_. 

Shut the kark up, he tells that part of himself. 

“Considering the fact that if you were to come to my barracks, you’d be on the Resolute, and throwing you out would mean tossing you out the airlock-- no, I wouldn’t.”

“Wow, _thanks_.”

Rex nods, his heart not in it. Fox sighs. It's a deliberate sigh, a carefully constructed weakness, probably shown for the precise purpose of getting Rex to open up.

He wants to be offended by it. Offended that he’s being patronized, that he’s being manipulated, that Fox ignored his obviously insincere claim that he’s fine, stuck around anyway. He wants to be angry, maybe. In reality, he's just tired.

He thinks of the Adjutant-General. He thinks of the Commander. He thinks of the word yes.

"Why does it keep getting worse," Rex says, and he lacks the energy to make the statement into the question it's supposed to be. 

Fox’s eyes flick up, and if he didn’t know Fox as well as he does, he’d say that Fox looks him in the eyes. He does know Fox, though, and he knows that Fox’s gaze is actually latched onto the furrow of his brow.

“As in, this leave?” Fox asks, and he sounds doubtful of the words even as he says them.

“As in _this life_ ,” Rex hisses back, aggressive for no real reason, and his hands curl into fists without his consent. He has to work to force them back open. "Why does _everything_ keep getting-- keep getting karking worse!"

His voice rises involuntarily on the last few words, echoing uncomfortably around the refresher, and— and it's like he's in Umbara again, like he can hear the echoes of Krell's mocking laugh, like the shadows twist and turn. It's like he's in Umbara, and a former Jedi is killing vode, and it's like he's on Coruscant and a former Jedi is on trial after being accused of killing vode. Dogma was led away in handcuffs, never to be seen again, just because Rex wasn't _strong_ enough, and Fox had stood down on the General's orders, set his blasters back to stun, so this time the Commander was the one in handcuffs instead, and—

"I like to blame Dooku, personally," Fox says, voice light. It's surprising enough to ricochet Rex back to the present, and he blinks. "I mean yeah, I know it's unoriginal, but everytime Stone starts blaming Trench for osik— the Seppie tarantula General, you know the one— someone makes a trench foot joke, and ruins everyone else's appetites for the rest of the day, so… Dooku it is. There's no Dooku foot, thankfully."

"You blame Dooku," he repeats dumbly, choosing to just not comment on the second half of… that.

"For everything continuously getting worse? Yeah. He's a nice, safe target to pin the blame on."

Rex snorts, rolls his eyes. Breathes in. Breathes out. Curls each finger in. Straightens them all out.

Click, click, click, _clunk_.

The ‘fresher’s lights are too bright, and he shuts his eyes, tries to think. Fox’s karking Dooku rant was di’kutla, but Rex feels a little more in his body, a little less like he wants to leave behind his own skin, and that’s… better than before. 

It’s not good, but it is just slightly better.

He sits. He breathes. Fox does the same.

And at some point, he finally falls asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> \- Additional warnings for referenced rape/non-con, the aftermath of rape, sexual coercion, referenced child abuse re. Kamino, mentions of character death re. Umbara, internalized victim blaming, dissociation, implied Sith mind fuckery, and the fun cocktail of general issues that are pretty much a given when one writes about clone troopers (ie. dehumanization, eugenics, slavery). 
> 
> \- Fox was _actually_ panic space-texting the Guard CMO at the end of the fic. Rex just had his eyes closed, so he didn't see that.
> 
> \- Listen, I'm not saying that I have more of this AU sitting in my drafts... but part of the reason this fic took so long because I ended up cutting 2.5k of it, and I didn't actually delete any of that, so even though it says that this is a one shot, there's a chance that I might continue this. 
> 
> \- By the way, this is NOT the "Ahsoka isn't expelled from the Order and that makes everything worse, actually" AU I mentioned on Tumblr, lol. That AU is coming, just... slowly. Very slowly, oops.
> 
> \- Anyway, I hope you enjoyed! Come talk to me on Tumblr [@coruscantguard!](https://coruscantguard.tumblr.com/)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Sacrifice Enough and Maybe I Won't Drag You to Hell](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27028942) by [6Space_Witch9](https://archiveofourown.org/users/6Space_Witch9/pseuds/6Space_Witch9)




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